Owner Mystified As 8-Foot Mechanical Ape Goes Missing

An 8-foot mechanical gorilla standing outside a Maine flea market store could move its arms but not much else, and it still managed to go missing.

The heavy gorilla disappeared - in broad daylight - and owner Lowell Miller wonders how anyone could have taken it so easily.

The gorilla was last seen at the weekend flea market and Miller realized it was missing when he started to close up at the end of the day.

All the time he had thought his clerk had wheeled it inside and the clerk thought Miller had moved it.

Miller says the gorilla had a concrete base, with electric motors inside that moved the arms up and down and turned it sideways.

"Who the heck would ever steal a gorilla as heavy as that thing was?," Miller is asking after initial searches by cops have turned up nothing.

State Police Sgt. Jeff Ingemi believes the primate is now decorating some college student's apartment.

UPDATE:

The 8-foot-tall mechanical gorilla is back home after it was found dumped in a cornfield in Vermont.

Owners Sandy and Lowell Miller were delighted to see the gorilla but say it will need some care for its injuries: a head severed from its body, holes and rips in its face, and a broken arm.

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